Peer-to-peer and peer-to-group communications, such as Short Message Service (SMS), Multimedia Message Service (MMS), EMS (Enhanced Message Service), e-mail and Instant Messaging (IM), are being used more frequently as a mechanism for delivering advertisements. The term “tagging” is generally used when describing this type of advertising, i.e., a tag is an advertisement which is delivered to users' communication devices using any of the foregoing techniques. The term Tag refers to information added by a service operator, such as MVNO (mobile virtual network operator), MNO (mobile network operator), other 3rd party or a sender (e.g. using a suitable application in a sending device to a peer-to-peer, peer-to-group, service-to-peer or service-to-group digital message). The information contained within the Tag could be at least one of the following: part of a an advertisement campaign, a service acquisition message, and information services (news stories, weather, ‘What's On’, etc.), or any other content.
In particular, the SMS is a universal standard that allows the users of cellular telephones, cable telephones, or other communication devices which support it, to send and receive messages with a text content that can comprise a predetermined maximum number of alphanumerical characters.
In the alphabetical coding system of the European standard GSM, the maximum number of characters is 160, in the Cyrillic standard the maximun number of characters is 140, and with the UCS2 (Turkish, Greek, Arab, Chinese, Thai, etc.) standard the maximun number of characters is 70.
The evolution of SMS has led to EMS, for incorporating in a SMS text message graphics, images, animations and/or sounds.
In this context SMART MESSAGE (SM) is also used, which is a standard developed by Nokia Corporation and universally recognized. SM enables the addition graphical, audio and video content to normal SMS text messages.
Both the SMART MESSAGE and the EMS standards are made linking several SMS to one another.
A Flash Message, also called SMS of class 0, is a special text message, improved from the SMS message. Its content is displayed directly on the display of the mobile phone.
The MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) is a universal standard that enables the users of mobile phones and other communication devices that support it to send and receive messages with content of text, images, graphics, sounds, audio clips and/or video clips. The structure of the MMS consists of one or more pages or “slides”, each containing two regions, one for the text and one for the images. The pages, furthermore, can be timed, and sound can be appended, and they can be displayed. Each page, or slide, has the same layout. The MMS is therefore an extension of the concept of SMS, are MMS messages are typically called multimedia messages.
Concerning SMS, the cost of the messages is typically independent of the length of the text being sent, which only seldom achieves the maximum allowed. Therefore, the user incurs the same cost for a single word as for a long text within the limits. The same applies for a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO), i.e. MVNO typically pays to Mobile Network Operator (MNO) the same fee per message independent of the length of the text as delivered for MVNO's client. To clarify, a MVNO is a company that provides mobile (sometimes called wireless or cellular) telephone service but does not have its own allocation of the radio frequency spectrum nor all of the infrastructure required to provide mobile telephone service.
The same occurs for other types of the above cited messages, EMS, SMART MESSAGE and MMS, where the cost of the sent message is typically fixed, or calculated for blocks of fixed length, or calculated as packages of delivered data. Therefore, except for rare cases, a residual space not exploited by the user is always present.
The use of unused space within digital communications for advertising use creates a substantial inventory of available (that is, unused) tag space and thus requires a substantial inventory of tags to be used to fill these available tag spaces. Efficient use of this tag inventory with a varied supply of commercially viable tags can be problematic. For SMS tags alone, it is estimated that for every 100,000 mobile users, there are more than 2,000,000 tag spaces available every month. Accordingly, it is a primary concern of mobile operators and advertisers to deliver tags to the users of the service that are relevant, engaging and timely.
To this end, “House Ads” are frequently used by mobile operators and are a set of advertisements that promote the mobile operator itself. However, the mobile operator is then unable to directly obtain revenue from the advertisements, tags, links as would occur if a party other than the mobile operator were utilizing this unused available space.